I've been talking about transportation's role in connecting people and opportunity since I took the oath of office as Secretary. My colleague -and fellow former mayor-- HUD Secretary Julian Castro has been an equally strong advocate for the role housing plays. Of course, Fast Lane readers will recognize that these are not competing ideas but cooperative visions.

And today at the Brookings Institution discussion, "Pathways to Opportunity: Housing, Transportation, and Social Mobility," Secretary Castro and I discussed how transportation and land use decisions work together to break down barriers and build ladders of opportunity.

For readers who might be unfamiliar with HUD, the rule HUD announced last summer, "Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing" (AFFH), builds on a number of regulations set forth by the Fair Housing Act of 1968 as well as the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The major innovation of HUD’s new rule is transforming what had been for nearly 50 years a paperwork exercise into a meaningful, data-driven planning approach that not only better informs decision makers, but also makes the consequences of their actions transparent to the community.

HUD's AFFH is aligned with DOT's own Ladders of Opportunity initiative. Through our program, we work to help more Americans reach opportunity by ensuring our transportation system provides reliable, safe, and affordable ways to reach jobs, education and other essential services. We also know that by investing in transportation infrastructure within a community we can attract opportunity into that community.

DOT has a number of data-driven tools that are helping decision makers make more informed choices and the public more informed about their outcomes. Most importantly, the performance-management regime launched by MAP-21 is requiring state and regional governments to set numerical goals and report their progress on key areas of safety, state of good repair, congestion, and environmental quality.

Another example is our Transportation And Health Tool produced in partnership with the Centers for Disease Control. This helps decision-makers understand how housing and transportation decisions relate to health outcomes.  And the DOT-HUD Location Affordability Portal estimates costs at the neighborhood level for the two biggest pieces of a household budget: housing and transportation.

One way we know we can improve social mobility is by helping decision-makers understand where transportation assets exist and where there are gaps in public transportation service. That's why, during today's discussion,  I was pleased to announce DOT's upcoming National Transit Map.

You see, our public transportation system connects millions of Americans to opportunity, but it doesn't connect all of them. To measure and evaluate the system, and understand where there may be gaps in access, we need to ensure all stakeholders have the data and tools to be able to measure connectivity. A key element of measuring connectivity is having accurate data about the transportation system, including transit—such as where transit stops are, how frequent transit service is, and where transit routes go. Many transit agencies already publish this data locally, but it has never been combined into one national, openly available map of transit service in America.

So we're doing just that: working on a geographic database of transportation networks, facilities, and infrastructure nationwide.  Our National Transit Map won't replace your local transit agency's route map, and we're not tracking your local bus or providing trip planning --there's an app for that! But we are increasing the availability of data needed to ensure our transportation system provides access to jobs, education, medical care, grocery stores, and other key services.

We are going to close the transit data gap. And by doing that, we hope to help close the transit service gap and connect the millions of Americans who need physical mobility in order to achieve social mobility.

Now, our Department is hard at work on closing the opportunity gap, and these are just a few of the tools we're using. I encourage you to learn more about what we're doing at www.transportation.gov/opportunity.

My thanks to Brookings and to Secretary Castro for a lively, informative, and --I hope-- productive conversation; let's keep it going!